Murdoch to Testify to Parliament as Police Seek Tape

Lawmakers asked for News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to be recalled after the transcript of the tape was published by Exaro News last week in which Murdoch told reporters at the Sun newspaper that bribery had been a routine practice. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch
agreed to testify before the U.K. Parliament a second time as
London police sought a recording of him discussing probes of
bribery and phone-hacking at company newspapers.

“Murdoch welcomes the opportunity to return to the Select
Committee and answer their questions,” New York-based News
Corp. said yesterday in a statement. “He looks forward to
clearing up any misconceptions as soon as possible.”

Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport committee said
yesterday it would write to the 82-year-old Murdoch, asking him
to give evidence about the scandals again. Lawmakers asked for
Murdoch to be recalled after a transcript of the tape, in which
Murdoch told reporters at the Sun newspaper that bribery had
been a routine practice, was published by Exaro News last week.

“We are seeking to obtain the tape of the meeting in which
Rupert Murdoch appears to have been recorded,” Cressida Dick, a
Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner, told a separate
group of lawmakers yesterday.

Police have made more than 100 arrests, including former
News Corp. journalists and staff, in probes of wrongdoing at the
company’s U.K. publications triggered by the discovery two years
ago that the now-defunct News of the World listened to messages
on the mobile phone of a murdered teenager. News Corp. split its
broadcast and newspaper units into different companies following
the scandal.

Published Online

Exaro, based in London, said today it was preparing to hand
over 23 minutes of audio recordings of Murdoch in the meeting,
which they’ve already published online.

“We have put all the audio that we have of that meeting up
on the website,” editor-in-chief Mark Watts said in an
interview. He said that while he’d made a transcript of the full
meeting, his source had refused to let him publish portions of
the recording where people other than Murdoch spoke.

A spokeswoman for the Culture, Media and Sport Committee
declined to discuss what lawmakers want to ask him about. The
committee also agreed yesterday it’ll take evidence from Brian
Leveson, the judge who led a yearlong inquiry into the practices
of the press, on Oct. 10.

“I don’t know why they would bring Murdoch in again unless
it’s to treat him like a school boy and give him another slap on
the wrist,” said Alex DeGroote, a media analyst at Panmure
Gordon & Co. in London.

Absolutely False

News Corp. said last week that it would be “absolutely
false” to suggest Murdoch knew of payments to police.

News Corp., the publishing arm of Murdoch’s empire, fell
1.5 percent to $15.71 yesterday in New York. 21st Century Fox
Inc., the new film and TV company, fell 0.9 percent to $30.09.

Murdoch told Parliament during his last appearance in 2011
that it was “the most humble day of my life,” as he and his
son James Murdoch blamed staff for not bringing phone-hacking to
their attention.

In one section of the transcript published last week,
Murdoch tells his staff, some of whom have been arrested in the
bribery probe: “payments for news tips from cops: that’s been
going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn’t instigate it.”

He said one of the first things he saw when he bought the
News of the World tabloid in 1969 was a safe full of money that
he was told was for bribes, according to the tape published by
Exaro, an online news service.

Elsewhere on the tape, Murdoch criticized the probes and
said that the company “hadn’t given them anything for months.”

Voluntary Cooperation

While Dick declined to comment on the content of the
recording, she said that since May voluntary cooperation from
the company and its Management Standards Committee had
diminished.

“In terms of cooperation that is related to requests for
new material, those are now always supervised by the court,”
Dick told the lawmakers.

“The only person who could give evidence that could be
used to investigate Rupert Murdoch is Rupert Murdoch,” said
Mark Lewis, a lawyer for some phone-hacking victims, including
the family of murdered school girl Milly Dowler. “When he spoke
to his colleagues, he didn’t think it would be reported.”

One highlight of the 2011 testimony was a comedian
attempting to attack Murdoch with a shaving foam pie, only to be
fought off by Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng. Murdoch and Deng are
now divorcing.